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17 May 2013

Joseph Farman and the ‘ozone hole’

Joseph Farman, CBE, who died recently, was the British Antarctic Survey scientist who discovered the ‘ozone hole’ using instruments called Dobson Spectrometers pointed at the sky above Antarctica. I interviewed Joe for An Oral History of British Science over six long sessions in 2010 and 2011. I felt sad to hear that he had died; he was interesting, warm and extraordinarily funny on and off the recording. I would like to use this blog to allow Joe to comment on his Telegraph obituary in which we learn that ‘In 1990 Mrs Thatcher paid generous tribute to Farman for sounding the alarm at an international conference on the ozone layer.’ Here is Joe’s account of the conference:

We find in these two clips a striking feature of what we might call Joe’s ‘character’ or ‘personality’: the tendency to stand irritated and amused alongside an absurd political and media culture in which ‘scientific knowledge’ can float away from its context in muddled and exaggerated claims. Darkly funny throughout, Joe’s life story interview captures the exasperation of someone who refused to stray from reporting what his instruments had recorded – low ozone concentrations in the peculiar environment of the Antarctic stratosphere – even if that meant covering his face in television interviews: